Monday, April 16, 2007 Editorial: Post-Easter trapo
“MANGHILABOT gayud kita (let’s get involved).”
Though the Holy Week break has long become a memory, the Easter Sunday message of Cebu Archbishop Ricardo Cardinal Vidal becomes more relevant as the election draws closer.
Vidal’s call for involvement is apt, coming as it does from the chairperson of the Citizens’ Involvement and Maturation in People’s Empowerment and Liberation, a church-based nongovernment organization that has been training and involving communities in election monitoring since the early 1990s.
For while trapo originally referred to a politician mired in the traditions of patriarchy and corruption, the inferences can also apply to voters that, as the popular wisdom goes, deserve the leaders they vote into office.
As Easter Sunday represents resurrection and renewal for Christians, the church’s dissemination of the Oratio Imperata, a prayer prepared by the archdiocese for the coming election, reminds the faithful to redeem and rejuvenate the Christian challenge of prayer and deeds, which means to vote according to one’s conscience, keep the campaign period and elections peaceful, and protect the sanctity of the votes.
“Sacred and social”
One such initiative begun last year was the Pinoy Voters’ Academy (PVA).
This is an initiative of the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV)-Diocese of Imus and the De La Salle University-Dasmariñas’ Social Transformation through Advocacy and Reforms (Star).
According to www.dasma.dlsu.edu.ph/outreach/ppcrv-star.asp, the “provincial parish-based political but non-partisan citizen’s movement” vows to bring about “clean, peaceful, meaningful and credible elections.”
Through its core groups of volunteers in academe and other sectors, the PVA conducts continuing education on the rights and responsibilities of voters, a crash course on local governance and responsible citizenship, and political affairs for advocacy for electoral reforms.
According to the PPCRV-Star, the church-a community embracing the clergy, religious, laity and the faithful-is a stakeholder and thus a guardian of democracy.
Thus, the social and the sacred obligations of a Christian are not separate but complementary for upholding human rights and dignity, contends the PPCRV-Star.
Voca
“Vocare (give voice)!”
In the downloadable PowerPoint presentation of the PVA, each leader and follower responds to a vocation, a call for vocare.
Though citizenship requires obedience to civil authorities, civil disobedience is also as much a civic responsibility when, according to PPCRV-Star, the authorities violate their right at governance by abusing power.
Transgressions against the “moral order and human rights, the common good and the legally constituted legal order” corrode the moral right of political authority to govern; thus, civil disobedience equates to civic responsibility.
“If the church will not involve itself, then it ceases to be CHURCH,” exhorts the PPCRV-Star.
In his message during the Good Friday Siete Palabras, Cebu Vicar General Esteban Binghay challenged Cebuanos to reform politics in the country. “We, voters, have the capability to change traditional politics (trapo).”
Enlightened voters will even raise the bar on Binghay’s Easter challenge.
The sacred and social will to reject political candidates that have carried out or done nothing against graft and corruption should also be as inflexible in rejecting, weeding out and correcting the same laxity in trapo voters and citizens.
